User talk:WindyCityRider

Clearly you and I have a difference of opinion with regard to the Gary Radnich wikipedia page. I stated my own rationale for my own revision on the Gary Radnich "discussion" page.

To summarize, our disagreement is over this text, which you believe should be part of the page and I believe is inappropriate.

"In 2003, the SF Weekly described his radio program as "amateurish" and "incomprehensible" while awarding "Best Sports Talker" to his KNBR colleague Tom Tolbert. In 2005, Art Spander panned Radnich for his support of Larry Krueger's racist comments about Giants' skipper Felipe Alou. In 2006, the SF Weekly named Radnich "Best Sportscaster", noting that his broadcasts are "spontaneous" and that he "knows sports" ."

My problem with the text is that it violates Wikipedia's neutral-POV policy. The article on Radnich is a stub, and it's inappropriate in such an article to go to the extent you did in searching for criticism of him.

The above paragraph has two main sources for its criticism, and the inappropriate-ness of each source can be illustrated.

1) With regard SF Weekly--you cite it for calling Radnich "amateurish" and "incomprehensible" while awarding Best Sports Talker to Tom Tolbert. Yet this award is nowhere cited in Tolbert's wikipedia page.

2) With regard to the Art Spander criticism. You say Spander "panned Radnich for his support of Larry Krueger's racist comments."  But nowhere does the word "racist," nor any part of Spander's criticism, appear on Krueger's wikipedia page.

These flaws would not be solved by editing the pages of Tolbert and Krueger. What I'm showing, in the above, is that these articles are cited by you only because they are critical of Radnich. Absent the fact that they agree with a point-of-view that you're trying to promote, they have no place in a stub like the one here.

In addition to all that, your citation of the Spander article is done in a very misleading way. That article is all about Krueger--with one sentence mentioning Radnich in passing more than halfway through the article. Yet the article is cited by headline in a way that readers are misled to believe that Radnich got himself in hot water for racist comments. Use of the word "racist" in any context is dangerous. The manner it's used in here is so reckless as to suggest the intent to mislead and libel a public figure.

Olbermann
The discussion appears to be more of an attempt to insert code words into the article, rather than go for open defamation. A lot of the comments made have been out of line, but Ann's RfC sort of skirts around the edges of what's permissible. I don't think that we should go too overboard on the BLP issue. Guettarda (talk) 20:05, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Just to clarify - that's just my opinion, don't take me too seriously. If you are concerned, I would suggest that you ask for opinions at WP:BLP/N. It might be helpful to get some fresh eyes in. As an involved editor, with obvious opinions of my own, I would rather err on the side of caution and not shut discussions down prematurely. Someone who was less involved might be in a better position to judge this fairly. Guettarda (talk) 20:11, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually a request at WP:BLP/N might be a good thing. Guettarda (talk) 20:31, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Of course my Olbermann "edit" was just for laughs. Couldn't you have left it up there for at least a few hours and let some people get a chuckle out of it? Regards Badmintonhist (talk) 05:13, 8 March 2009 (UTC)